Over 30 years ago, Fred Dekker introduced us to The Monster Squad, a film that initially didn’t make a huge splash but has gone on to become one of the most beloved horror movies of the 1980s. There have been talks of some kind of remake for many years now, and as Dekker just revealed in a chat with Moviefone, Paramount recently aimed to make a TV series.
Why didn’t it happen? Well, any sort of series adaptation of The Monster Squad – a movie about kids fighting monsters – would probably be too similar to IT and “Stranger Things.”
Dekker explained to the site, “I’ll be completely honest, Shane Black and I have both been approached about adapting The Monster Squad for television. Was it my first choice? No. But I’m a big fan now of long form television. And figuring out a way to take Monster Squad and turn it into a long form series was very exciting to me.”
“But when we were approached, it was right after Stranger Things,” Dekker recalled. “Hollywood is…a monkey see, monkey do business. So Shane and I had a meeting at Paramount. I said, ‘Let me just clarify — you guys want us to do a rip off of a rip off of us?’ And they all sort of laughed. But that’s basically what it came down to. And my other thought was to show us the squad as they are now. I thought, well, let’s make this movie for the people who fell in love when they were kids and say, ‘Where is the squad as adults?’ And Shane said to me, ‘Well that’s It.’ I said, ‘Yeah, it’s a great idea.’ And he goes, ‘No, that’s Stephen King’s IT. ‘The first part of the book and the first movie is them as kids fighting monsters and the second movie is them as adults fighting monsters.’”
“So as a fan of the genre, there is nothing to me remotely interesting or new about Monster Squad as a movie or a TV show. Maybe in 10 years, maybe in 15 years. But right now it’s like, well everybody’s already doing it.”
Dekker also notes in the chat that he’s very much opposed to anyone coming along and remaking The Monster Squad, and he also no interest in remaking the 1987 film himself.
The Squad, it seems, will remain in the ’80s. At least for now.
